Concerning the Hiway War and her Lasting Effects (cont.)

If the first year following the exodus out of the Lands Bravado was a period of reset, during which the bones of the old burned in hellfire and the culture of a people died with their constituents, then the second year was a rebirth.

Like ashes scattered over a fallow field, riotous growth followed after. The discovery of grand mystery under the old town swept us up and along like a demagogue her flock. 

At first it was a trickle - a few dedicated Delvers disappeared into the mud to find the roots of that perfect obelisk of white stone springing up and out of the caldera. Within days they returned, eyes brighter than the treasures they found and adventure on their lips.

Below us, they said, there are steel doors that guard something precious. They spoke of blinking lights that still function. Live munitions that click and whirl like analog machines. Long stretches of corridor bored out by ancient machinations that turn the stone smooth for miles and miles. Nothing like the Lascarian Tunnels of Old Bravo - twisting things chiseled by time and circumstance - but something deliberate and terrifying in its implications.

More delvers followed. Irons and Retrogrades, mutants and evolved for whom the residual radiation was merely an inconvenience, dove into the Ruins like Saltwise into brine and came up again and again with ancient metals, defunct computing devices, niceties of a fallen world and, very occasionally, the delicate pages of notes held together by little more than the careful handling of their discoverers. 

And the Lonestar heeded them. 

What happened next was a complex two-step of bureaucracy and belligerence. A paperwork whirlwind that, when the cyclone died, created a powerhouse capable of producing a dynasty.

What was previously the Road Commission laid the first tracks near Essex, the first city on what would become The Bravado Line. The newly christened Railroad Commission contracted out evolved and mutant strains to carry and lay corrugated steel and heavy wooden beams along the old trade routes between the two settlements, while Warden Tabitha St Mercy of Prudence Penitentiary employed her penitent work crews to begin the same process on the Bravado end.

Using notes safeguarded for generations, the Conglomerate, a collection of Digitarian houses who possess a great and shrouded interest in the Ruins below New Bravado, began the process of constructing the first high-powered locomotive in the Lonestar. The Ox, at that time a skeleton of iron, steel and super-plastics, would eventually become a gestalt amalgamation of construction equipment, a half dozen derelict trains and the engine of a single downed jet plane. Contracted and funded by the Railroad Commission the Conglomerate employed the great and surviving minds of scientists and psionists alike in their research centers in the town of Waking to provoke the monolithic iron horse into motion. 

But all great movements cause waves, and the process of rebirth is often as bloody as it is brilliant. For all the steel and will of its warden, Prudence Penitentiary for the Peregrine and Penalized buckled under the weight of work crews, its guardship, and the compressed conditions of its cell blocks. Riots ensued and the sickness of man was put on morbid display. In the far displaced land of New Bravado, with no larger authority to appeal to, Warden Tabitha St. Mercy closed the doors of her prison and let Wrath determine the outcome.

Colloquially we now refer to the Penitentiary as Killhouse Prison in reference to this massacre, for when the doors were opened there were little more than corpses on concrete. The survivors begged for the Warden to again resume control. Amidst her Wrath there was Pride in her work and so the Warden struck a deal with her prisoners and the tradition of the Indulgence was born. No prisoner would be made to serve more than a year in the Prison, if they were smart. For once a year all prisoner contracts would unilaterally expire, rendering them free people. Twenty-four hours later the contracts would be reinstated, the doors would close and Warden Tabitha St. Mercy would sic the Law Dogs upon the retreating backs of any prisoner who loitered in her city.

And so, with the tradition instituted and upheld, Prudence Penitentiary resumed its work on the railroad with gusto, outstripping the paid workers of the Railroad Commission by several weeks. The uptick in bodies begged a question, however. The Killhouse Massacre was the most devastatingly fatal event since the Bomb that decimated Old Bravo. Without a proper morgue, many of those first prisoners escaped, we assume. Perhaps they retreated to the Dune Sea or fled east towards the Clutch.

Both the Railroad Commission and the Prison found themselves at a loss. Without a way to control the flow of bodies, a prisoner could simply commit an infection to the cause of their escape. Without a mechanism by which to enforce order in New Bravado the system would fail, and without voluntary work crews seeking to shorten their sentences the railroad’s production would be brought to a grinding, painful halt.

The Grave Council, a collection of Undead strains lead by the powerful Takheeta Firstborn, stepped in as the solution.

Through ritual and rite the Council of Grave Decisions determined the location of each morgue-to-be. They dispatched Graverobbers and Grave Touched to these sites, and committed their own bodies to the creation of these morgues and, in a brilliant exchange of power, negotiated total ownership of these sites and the right to tax anyone who used them. 

Now that their lives and afterlives were solidly controlled under comfortable capitalism, the survivors resettling the area found a great darkness lifting - literally. A land that had been burning with hellfire now burned with the lights of hundreds of new homesteads. In the spaces between powers, the voids of civilization, new stars were lit aflame. Had these people always been here? Or were they deposited on the shores of this disaster like flotsam on the beach after a storm?

Wherever they came from, they brought with them the salt of the earth, these settlers of the lowlands and hollers. They were the early risers, once more planting the seeds of hope into the soot-streaked soil. New quiet folk for a new settlement. Keepers of the land and Tenders of the hearth. Quick with a witty comment and slow to judgement. A magnet for a network of community bonds across the region - the Lovelace Family began to be used as a surname and identity of these landsmen, hundreds of families finding kinship under their good name. Thousands of strings of stories and lives tied together in hope for a beautiful agricultural future.

And among these quiet neighbors, there remained institutions of charity and well-being. Now that the immediate harm of the Great Disaster was healing, the Widows of the Lonestar turned their eyes to where else their kindly influence could improve the lives of others. They took a keen interest in the work of the Grave Council, and lent their weight into helping to prepare places of sanctuary and rest for those weary from work, sickness, and disease. Anyone seeking a meal, bed, or safety at their door was never turned away - including a large number of those who managed to escape the tall walls of Killhouse Prison. Above all, they sought to protect a populace that had, for too long, been victimized. 

To the north the Tribes Disparate under Holy Mother Queen Jasper thrived. Maintaining a friendly rapport with the Braves that saved their people, Jasper committed workers to the cause of re-building the city of Bravado even as she kept an iron grip on the thirteen tribes that writhed and strove beneath her. Houses formed, with figureheads who swear fealty to the Holy Mother in a feudal framework that benefits both the Lady and those who report to her. The individual tribes vie for her attention and favor, some committed by blood and sword - others by convenience.

The Junkerpunks, a loose coalition of seafaring folk, begin to earn the name alluded to in the first chapter of this long-form essay. Among their ragtag ranks a leader emerged, a Saltwise of dangerous charisma and wit, Sinker Swim captains the flagship of the Junkerpunk flotilla. 

The nature of their separation from the naysayers of the Clutch encouraged in the Junkerpunks an  underdog mentality that never truly left their culture. Seeking out the downtrodden, desperate, and dangerous to swell their ranks the Junkerpunks quickly became known as pirates, bandits - but also coy merchants in an era where few ships navigated the inland seas of the Spoiled Coast.

It was this mercantile mindset, this author believes, that lead the Junkerpunks to build a modern-day Tortuga in the middle of the lake that was Old Bravo. The marina, cheekily called the Punkerport by locals, trucks in undocumented finds from the Ruins as much as it does raw imports of food and supplies for the delve-camps there.

The Junkerpunks, in the second year of their watery pilgrimages, found an accord with the Spiderhause Redstar who have, in recent years, taken up residence in Essex and its surrounding plane-space. Both underdogged, both committed to uplifting those who otherwise do not have the means to achieve their own strength, the members of Spiderhause left the land that had treated them poorly to try again on the open sea. What the Junkerpunks lack in organizational skills and raw, coordinated strength, the Redstars of Spiderhause make up for in spades.

In the second year following the Bomb that destroyed Old Bravo, the world began again to turn. The hole in the sky closed up, mostly. The water in the lake might never be drinkable in our lifetime but the fish seem to like it just fine. The riotous growth-post-nuclear burned in the summer and regrew again in the following spring, just as it always has. These events in isolation beget no particular question. But in aggregate, in the context of the bomb and its thereafter effects, this author wonders aloud what arcane circumstances render this land livable again after only two years. And if the truth of this place is merely old, or truly ancient.

It is said around these parts that things are happening that have happened before. But it is this author’s humble opinion that previous trends do not indicate future behavior. And that just because something has happened before, does not mean it will always happen.

-  “Concerning the Hiway War and Her Lasting Effects”

By: Dr. Perenthius Goodfellow 

Concerning the Hiway War and Her Lasting Effects

In the weeks following the Second Stampede and the nuclear detonation that marked the end of the Hiway War, the second war that follows all wars began in earnest. The mass exodus out of Bravo and her outlying territories was only the beginning of that effort. And the hundreds of displaced peoples, uprooted from their culture as much as their homesteads, began to assert themselves on the desolate wastes beyond the borders of their vaporized town.

The first burning season was the worst we’d ever seen. The bomb carved a hole in the sky. Not like the quaint colloquialisms that paint the stars above Lonestar as distant forges, but in a very literal sense. The ionizing radiation ripped a hole in our atmosphere some ten miles across, exposing us to raw starstuff beyond our ken. The sun baked the land black, reducing what little was left by the bomb to flakey, carbonized debris.

Radiation sickness rent through the population like gorehound claws would a lump of tepid butter. Hundreds grew ill, their immune systems mangled by the blast and the fallout thereafter. Dozens died to common illnesses that had no business taking the hardy Bravo folk, while dozens more will live the rest of their lives with the scarred imprint of their clothes on their backs, twisted and marked with nobbly keloids in the places that the initial thermal wave tore at them from behind.

Storms, rendered radioactive and boiling by circumstance, swept over what we now refer to as the “Blastlands” South of Old Bravo. The Oil Fields, as they were called before, were ignited by the bomb and even now, at the time of this entry, burn hot and bright below the black dirt. To rest your feet too long on the Blastlands invites pain, and only with thick and leather soles would this author ever suggest to traverse them. Month by month, they extend further southward as the Texas Tea below ignites; threatening the Imixin people and the various tribes that inhabit the Pridelands and Dead Marches. Ambassadors forged north and spoke widely of a new homeland. Opportunists and criminals accosted the diasporic Unborn as they made the pilgrimage across the burning wastes, forcing the Imixin people to look for allyship in the uprooted and downtrodden.

They found this in the shape of other mutant and gorger strains. Full Dead, Retrogrades, Lascarians, Semper Morts and Tainted; discriminated against in the wake of a disaster that cast any zed-presenting persons as aggressors and and monsters, they began to form a loose association of tribes that would eventually come to be known as the contemporary Grave Council.

Other victims of the war, distraught and displaced, banded together - finding refuge from within. Three hardy individuals, self-titled Widows of the Lone Star, formed an orphanage-of-sorts. A haven for the misfits and the lost. They wore their grief on their sleeves - these common folk that had sacrificed everything in the war against Robb - but there was a fragile hope in their kinship and, as is the case when victims come together in common cause, there was eventually strength and determination.

In the meantime, beyond the blastlands and into the dangerous and virulent forests that characterize our northern Lonestar, the Antler Tribe’s flotilla came to rest at last. After months of searching these itinerant peoples began to craft for themselves a new capital and a new identity alongside the Cervaxi who had saved and hosted them in the wake of their genocide. Queen Jasper, first of the Antlers, proved herself the conqueror she had always claimed and in the space of a few months, the Antler Tribe annexed twelve clans and their power grew to that of a small nation state. Even now the Antlers and her Tribes Disparate rule the northern lands as a matter, not explicitly, but of course.

To the east of Old Bravo there was war, small wars that tore at the identity of the places they were waged in. Insurrection after insurrection as half a dozen leaders rose and fell, each time claiming that their way was the right one - only begetting more death when the the next demagogue climbed up to meet them.

Temple Station, as few call it now, after largely bloodless conflict came to rest firmly in the clutches of Warden Tabitha St. Mercy, the woman responsible if not for the founding, than the actualization of the Prison located there.

While The Clutch, located in the Concrete Isles, ballooned in terms of population. A divide quickly developed in the months following the Second Stampede. The nuclear winter that followed, affecting the entire latitude at which ground zero occurred, isolated a unhappy population to the shorehouses and fisheries there. The riots that broke out killed dozens, most often by the process of exposure when offending parties were thrown from the safehouses into the unforgiving, month-long blizzard uncharacteristic to this southern locale.

When the long winter ended, two factions had developed and one of them left. Called the Junkerpunks - at first a slight against their motley flotilla of repurposed boats, this loose coalition of Saltwise, Red Stars, Remnants, Diesel Jocks and Baywalkers set out to make a new identity along the Spoiled Coast. A kind of freedom-fighting but vicious underdog, they made their name first with blood and made targets of the looming leviathans below the murky waves. In that first year after the blast, the Junkerpunks only began to gain ground.

The Dune Sea to the west remained unchanged. Pitiless miles of sunbaked stone and sand have little to change in the wake of nuclear detonation. Raiders, previously deep-dwellers in the unexplored reaches of the desert migrated Eastwards towards the blastlands. Lured by the object of their worship, these blast-glass festooned and psionic madmen were among the first to brave the radioactive storms that surrounded ground zero for the first eight months following the Second Stampede.

It was only when the storms passed, and the end of the first year approached, that the lands Bravado became remotely livable again. A few wandering Aggies returned, lured by the radiation and the promise of discovery. The Firebrands, raiders as mentioned above, made their first primitive settlements around the muddy caldera that had been Bravo. And a few dedicated and Darwin monks took up residence and the purpose of cataloging and understanding the slow and stately evolution of a land post-nuclear.

Instead of a town, there was now a lake. An imperfect circle of muddy, radioactive water. The air was barely breathable and only the hardiest, fool or otherwise, could live in the Lands Bravado without suffering sterility or sickness.

But it was that they could live there at all that drew them. Radiation takes a long time to leech itself out of the soil, much longer than ten months.

It was in May of the year following the Second Stampede that the discovery was made. A pale and perfect edifice of stone rose up and out of the muddy ground that surrounded Old Bravo. Something older than the town that died there. Something older than any of us.

It was proximal to that obelisk of too-perfect rock that the town of Bravado was re-born.

Concerning the Hiway War and Her Lasting Effects

By: Dr. Perenthius Goodfellow

THE HIWAY WAR as penned by Ranger-Steward Raven

Ranger-Steward Raven here. It is fitting, that I make my final report in the burnt wreckage of Station Echo. Surrounded by as many ghosts as I am now, echos are all I hear.

Three weeks ago, Bravo’s citizenry detonated a nuclear device in the middle of their city and ended the conflict with the undead warlord, Hiway Robb.

War is horrible. It grinds us down to stumps and runs roughshod over our souls. It makes husks of men and I remember the brilliant, morbid expressions of my ranger kin when they realized that it was their lives they would sacrifice to preserve the peoples of the Lonestar. And the steely resolve that bastioned them against the terror of oblivion, knowing that their deaths would buy time.

The Braves were the best of us. I do not know how many survived the bomb. What reports I have from wandering itenerents indicate that some seven hundred persons made it out of the blast radius before the explosion. According to our last census this means some four hundred poor souls evaporated when we finally took down Hiway Robb. But this is vagaries, born of supposition and recollection. And I can only hope they saved enough of us.

In the spirit of my station, as steward to what was once the Rangers, I will do my best in the coming hours to convey, over the airways and to the disparate peoples of this commonwealth, the greater state of the landscape. It may not matter to you, but this will be my final report. The Rangers are scattered, dead, or determined not to be found. And I am content to put down my badge - and leave the business of justice to those of us unbroken and unbowed by this conflict.

-----

Ranger-Steward Raven reporting. On the greater and unaffiliated peoples of the Lonestar. These are the farmers and families, workers and merchants, commonfolk who have lost their land and their belongings and have been made to pick up and move far from the blastland that was our home and into the sanctuaries across the wastes that have enough food, water and work to support them. This is a rough estimate of their numbers and locations. Individual names will not be provided as I do not have them. But you may find your families and friends here.

Temple Station, bastioned by strong walls of concrete and steel, was only damaged in the explosion but not leveled. The lowest basements of the city held hundreds of huddled bodies when the bomb went off. And hundreds more spilled in after the radioactive fog cleared. It is now the most populated location in the blastlands around ground zero. In the three weeks since the bomb, in an act of rare and beautiful comradery, strains of all humanity struggle to rebuild the town quickly. There is word of a leader, a woman with half a face who calls herself warden. She is the one to speak to, if you are seeking shelter or the familiar faces of missing family.

The Stoneoak Caverns in the north are full, but not with the Lascarians that populated that place prior to the War. The Stoneoak people, royal and ancient, were wiped out by the Stampede prior to the bomb’s detonation. Now the people there are new, wandering among the vestiges of a dead culture. It is good they have a place to be, but they will struggle without the knowledge of those caverns and how to live in them.

The Third Eye has closed. There are not enough of this faction left to call them a right and proper entity. I am told the powerful psions of the lineage burned out their own brains holding back the stampede long enough for Bravo to finish their bomb. But their safecamps, scattered across the Lonestar, are populated by refugees. What food and supplies the Third Eye left behind will feed these people for a few weeks. But they will need to scatter soon - and so if you are looking for family among those camps I would move swiftly, friends.

The Antler Tribe have been reported seen across the wastes, but reports indicate they have taken up a permanent residence alongside the remnants of the Cervaxi peoples. Do not attend the Mudergoat Hovel thinking to find them there. They wander, in search of a homeland in a kind of inland flotilla of caravans and livestock - but you can see their banners from across the level blastlands red and proud and unburnt. Their Queen leads them, and hundreds follow in her train.

The Ranger Outposts are leveled. Hollow, burnt-out husks that we destroyed ourselves to keep Robb’s bandits from getting at our supplies. Part of me regrets that now, as I look out over the dozen hungry faces that fled here, thinking the Rangers would save them. We saved many, but we cannot save them all. Echo, Charlie and Delta are finished. In a few days I will take these people and we will make the pilgrimage northwards. Away from the blastlands.

The Darkmoon people, to the best of my knowledge, are dead. Their tunnels below the city of Bravo proper are nonexistent in the wake of nuclear hell. Only the bilgey backwaters far to the south continue to be structural, and these caverns are full. Already there is word of raiders that uncannily resemble the Darkmoon peoples, with crescents on their foreheads and foam on their lips. One case of badbrain untended is all it takes, my friends, to reduce a culture to memory and its people to murderous psychopaths. The backwater folk are calling them Nightstalkers. Be wary if you go searching there.

In comparison, the Redwater Complex to the west is thriving. It is a huge, meandering labyrinth largely unpopulated until now. Refugees balloon their numbers to the hundreds, and their leader - Wisest, has opened the doors to all Braves and disparate peoples. There is word, however, of a mysterious illness that renders the Lascarians of this lineage a sickly greenish color. With pale eyes and vacant expressions. But it is not the luxury of the refugee to turn away food and shelter, and so Redwater has become a bastion in its own right. If you go looking here, be respectful. This clan has been isolationists for many decades, and only in the wake of tragedy and the efforts of their own ambassadors do they welcome refugees now.

The Caine Family Ranch hosts some two dozen refugees. Far away from the blast this homestead fares well and can take more bodies to feed and to work. It’s matriarch boasts the best cooking in the Lonestar and expresses only that anyone who drops by will be fed in exchange for their labor to shore up the walls and tend the growing fields. If your family is here, friends, I think they are safe.

I have received a report that the surviving Scadians, formerly of their home Ansteorra, have broken ground on their first permanent dwelling since they became refugees during the Mustang War. The war truck used to breach the blockades finally gave its last and broke down on the last hilltop before the Dune Sea, where it was mostly disassembled for materials. Though its unofficial, some are calling their new home Cannon's Crown. Their time spent aiding Bravo has softened their, once notable, violent xenophobia, and have opened their new home as a way station for those who travel to and from the Dune Sea, and to all who once called themselves Rangers

Far to the East lies the Clutch. A city-state in the Concrete Isles, these watery taverns and fishhouses are alight with lanterns and the hungry faces of a hundred refugees. The inky waters here, rendered brackish with oil, ring a half-dozen islands dotted with newly-erected tents and homesteads. The Saltwise, who have previously only partied to trade, are taking notice. In a bizzare happenstance of war, this port has become an authority in the short weeks since the bomb. Few other port towns survived the stampede, and so the Clutch holds the purse strings for the foreseeable future.

The Lands Aggie are flat, featureless. Save for a few leaning towers and crazily oriented domiciles. The refugees that fled there are unaccounted for. And I would not suggest pilgrimaging after them into the radioactive hellscape. There is word of Darwinist Monks, who seek knowledge in the phantasmagoric fog that raises tumors and boils on the skin of the uninitiated. If you are seeking family here, misguided as I think you are, speak to them before venturing in yourself.

To the far west lies the Dune Sea. An uncharted land of heat and sand and sun. But because refugees are by definition running away from something worse, reports indicate that a large number of itenerents left Bravo in the direction of those hills. I wish these people the best, but recall in my youth the leviathans that lurk under the loose sand, and the yawning mouths of the monsters there that swallow people like you or I might an unpleasant pill. Good luck, Braves.

One notable exception to the dangers of the Dune Sea seems to be the Diesel Jock clan known as The Road Royals. After escaping the destruction of Bravo using the Lascarian clans as a distraction, the Royals have taken their fleet to the west. One sure way to avoid the leviathans below is to keep moving, and the DJs seem to have that down. Last report was that there was discontent in the clan based on how they helped the “townies” escape and the friction is threatening to split the clan along faction lines. Regardless of the outcome, the Dune Sea is both safer AND more dangerous due to these explosive-loving maniacs on wheels.

Falken Castle, a locale I did not know existed until their guardship opened the gates to the hungry and desperate, lies just outside of the blast radius. When searching for this place know that the walls are pale and stonework, and that you need only express you are friend to House Ramguard to enter. Already a tent city is erecting itself beneath their high walls, and the hollow halls of this place echo with the sound of civilization it has not seen since before the Fall.

Gun City, to the north, a prosperous cowtown that until now has kept to itself, has opened its gates to the same. A tradehub, largely run by Rovers, this locale can offer as much as any other in terms of food and shelter. Hundreds pass through this station, and posters of missing persons festoon the streets and alleys like so many pious flags in the wind.

The Killscout Caravans roam by definition. With a population of nearly a thousand, and many of them psionic in nature, this inland flotilla can be seen ambling across the blastlands with all the speed and momentum of brahman at march. They spread out across the wastes in a fan, and pick up refugees like a trawlingbarge scoops up cretaceous life from the silt below the Clutch. You will know where they have gone by the gore-marks in the dirt and the footprints that follow after. Luckily, you need only a brisk walk to catch up, given time.

Far, far to the north. At the edges of Star City, the Wasteland Witches have opened their compound doors to a choice few. Otherwise known as Devree Kapl, these psionists have a seedy past rooted in their affliction. But in times of war we make our choices, and these people have agreed to buoy Braves and lend us aid. We can only hope they stay friendly.

The Palace Godmoney, egregiously named for what it is, is the mudflats that once could have been called the Washborne plantation. A few broken hovels have sprung up here, just on the inside ring of the blastlands. Rife with crime and violence, if your kinship has fled to the Palace willingly, let them stay there and wish them the best.

The Litur Efni people, a rover caravan from far to the East, has left the Lonestar and taken refugees with them. They deal in spices, pigments, rare stones and beautiful things. Know them by their opulence and their kindness, friends. But seek them warily, and use the name “Vaan” when you do.

More centrally located, the McBride Ranch hosts some four dozen refugees. A visual callback to the plantations the bomb evaporated, this staging location has ample food and room for many more bodies. If you are looking for family or a place to stay, the point of contact is one Stacy McBride, the matriarch and steward of this ancestral home. A good pureblood, in a bad time.

And the Bishop Compound, an industrial homestead of impressive size, looms to the east as close as Temple Station does the north. An extended family of rovers and mericans maintain this waystation and you will know you are close by the tire marks in the road and the smell of refined peppermint. In a lawless land where we are all travelers, their brew will make them barons.

---

Ranger-Steward Raven Reporting. I have, to the best of my abilities and my intelligence, conveyed all the public refugee silos in the Lonestar proper. The peoples are scattered but they are converging at these locations. This is not an exhaustive list of peoples, locales, or efforts by the citizens of this commonwealth to make right in the wake of thermonuclear war. This is a rough state of the region that hopefully gives shape and comfort to the war-blinded and wandering. There are places for you to go, safety in numbers. The Rangers are gone but there are good people in the wastes. Find them, find shelter, rebuild.

Ranger-Steward Raven Out.

Stay Brave out there.

Evacuation and Stampede

A Change in Casting Time

We’re going to push back the time for the final casting time (NPC block) from 8pm - 12am to 9pm-1am. We’re doing this to provide some more game time for those planning to evacuate which will be the majority of players.

Scheduling this is a little tricky. We want to push this as late into the event as possible because we want to maximize everyone’s game time. We also cannot make it VERY late because players start turning into pumpkins around 12 or 1. The players who are at casting (NPC) are especially tired by this point in the weekend, so we need to consider that as well. We could do this in the morning, but big night-time zombie fight is kind of the thing we’re all here for. So.. we’re going to deliver a big night-time zombie fight.

We thought we could push things back another hour without sacrificing in other places, so we’re going to do that. If this change in timing causes any problems for you, please email us and we’ll be happy to help things.

The Saturday Schedule

If you have played with us for any length of time you have probably noticed that we like planning and scheduling. That being said, our content schedule has a margin of error of 15-30 minutes because Larp Happens.

Sat 10:00 pm. Evacuation
Sat 11:45 pm. Rest and rehydrate.
Sat 12:00 am. End-Game for Evacuees. Stampede for Sunsetters.*
Sat 1:00 am. Death Scenes for the Sunsetters.

*This does mean our sunsetters get a full MP refresh to play around with. So that’s cool.

Evacuees

If you’re fleeing Bravo then the fight to evacuate (yes.. there will be a fight) will be the last game content we run for you. Unless you die.

Once your character has survived, we’ll proceed to a small camp. This will either look a lot like Zuni or it will look like no-place-you-have-seen (depending on the weather and other circumstances). If we go to no-place-you-have-seen then we’ll drop glow sticks to lead you back home. :)

As previously mentioned, once your character survives you can:

1. Roleplay until your heart is content.

2. Join the Stampede

3. Decompress at the Spoiler Party

4. Watch for the Angst

If you want to Watch or Join.. we’ll offer instructions on how to do that at the event. (Where we send you is going to depend on which location we use).

Sunsetters

You’re going to watch all your friends leave you behind. You will also be in a ghost town all alone.. for a bit. We strongly encourage you to plan for this. Plan your final farewell and plan your time alone. What would you do knowing you only have two hours to live? What do you do when maybe you’re not surrounded by those closest to you? We will have some soft-content in the play space, but a lot of our attention will be on the Evacuees. Please plan accordingly. :)

The start of the Stampede will be marked with an air raid siren.

The end of the Stampede will (probably) be marked with the sound of an explosion. (If your fellow Survivors can build a Bomb which we think they will do question mark?)

Spoiler Party

At 12:00 am, we’re going to turn the Saloon into a decompress and hangout space. We’re going to eat pizza and drink soda because it only seems fitting that after an intense weekend of playing pretend we all revisit our childhood for a pizza party.

We’ll have our experience designers present as soon as possible.

Every weekend we try to give you some spoilers from that weekend. Instead, we’re going to invite you to ask ANY question you have EVER had over the last seven years. Let’s all reminisce about what was and what could have been together. Spoilers will start after 1:00 am.

We’ll also be available to talk about 3.0 and the future of Bravo.

Season Finale

Hello friendaroos. We’re sharing our May update a little early. We want to tell a story with you. In the spirit of that, we’re going to share a little about our hopes and expectations for the event (and some logistics too). We also want to lean into your ideas as well. If there’s something big and bold you want to do before we close the season and this version of Bravo, let us know! This blog post is a conversation starter, not an end point.

Sunless Garden

There will be a Sunless Garden at Boot Hill. We won’t be running it round-the-clock like last month, but we will happily take you through the Garden if your character has a death or sunsets.

Victory Condition

The stampede is coming. This isn’t a thing that can be stopped. There is no solution to this because (real talk) we’re wiping away the old setting to build something that will look very different for 3.0. The stampede is a mechanism for that change.

That means we might have to adjust our normal expectation of what victory looks like. For some characters victory might be fleeing and surviving. For others it might mean helping some group or another to survive. And for others still it might mean avenging the town and killing Rob. That’s going to be different for each character, but we definitely encourage you to think about it.

More importantly, we encourage you to think of this less as winning a game and more like telling a narrative. Bitter-sweet endings tend to make for poor games, but probably the most amazing and powerful stories. We encourage you to have a story and not a game.

The Plan

We don’t know what your plan is. We would like to though!

Probably it will involve a big bomb because.. you like building bombs and so far its the only thing we’ve heard. So we’re going to lean into that and bring out the bomb prop and some sound effects. And if we need to scrap that plan for another over the course of the event, we’ll do that too. This is a story we want to tell with you.

War Table Intel

The War Table will have new information and intelligence coming in over the weekend. This is something missing from our last event. Some of that was because we wanted the world to feel like it was closing in and the threat is now at the doorstep. Some of that is because we have finite resources and the Sunless Garden took a lot of energy. You said wanted this back, so we’re going to bring back intel and missions from the broken lines courtesy of your newest ally - the Guild. (yay?)

We will also have the broken remains of some factions who can either be used on the War Table or included in the Evacuation (by expending limited resources). Those factions will live on in 3.0. They will look different, they will change as the years pass, but they will at least survive.

War Missions

We’re blatantly stealing an idea from Downfall 2017 with some NPC Land war missions. Missions might include runs for supplies, a rescue mission, or an attempt on a hard target (like Sharkface).

One or more of these will be Terminal Runs. A Terminal Run will be a one-way trip. The only way back into play is through the Sunless Garden after your character is overrun by enemy forces.

Evacuation

Prior to the Stampede there will be an evacuation that takes characters through Zuni and to the old horse corral field. If you want your character to play in 3.0, then you should be on the evacuation module. Characters that evacuate Bravo can then choose to:

1. Roleplay with one another to close out open threads in their story.

2. Join the Stampede as an Extra (NPC). We will have brawlers and make-up nearby.

3. Decompress in the Saloon which will be an out-of-character space.

4. Watch the Stampede as a non-interactable character for maximum angst.

Stampede

The Stampede will be our final content for the event. This is a send-off for every character that wants to sunset. As such, it is our goal to make it as big and loud and fast and awesome as we can, an epic good bye for characters who give all and give their last. We want this scene to be the stuff of nightmares and legends, where a few stand against an ocean, and get to do one last thing before the waves crash ashore.

Characters who sunset in the Stampede will lose all their infection. Those characters will be marked in the database as retired. Players can take advantage of the full XP on that character when making a NEW character in 3.0.